


Too Long Since Rest

by Duganator01



Series: Cafe College Chaos [3]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Fluff, Pre-Slash, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:20:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23672203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duganator01/pseuds/Duganator01
Summary: Weiss is sleeping fine she swears. Okay, maybe she keeps staying up doing extra schoolwork. And fine maybe occasionally she's too stressed to sleep. And then the stress and the anxiety brought nightmares. But that was all fine, and she was handling it! Totally.Now if only she could convince one Ruby Rose of that.
Relationships: Ruby Rose/Weiss Schnee
Series: Cafe College Chaos [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1685560
Comments: 8
Kudos: 180





	1. Lacking Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Ruby isn’t the best at picking up on most social cues, but even she isn’t blind enough to overlook that Weiss is basically asleep standing up.

It’s late afternoon, some time after the last intense bits of work for the day, and Ruby and Weiss are sitting on a sun-warmed ledge near the edge of the campus, spending their rare bit of free time winding down from classes and not doing anything with their aching limbs for a while. 

They weren’t allowed a lot of time off, the clock was very much ticking what with finals and stuff, so what they do get, they cherish, whether alone or together.

Ruby was rambling on and on about something, voice loud and animated. Her points were illustrated with wide sweeps of her arms and exaggerated expressions like usual. Not even exhaustion could muffle her voice or her enthusiasm.

She was rambling about _something_ , sure, but Weiss had lost track of what _exactly_ she was talking about what felt like hours ago, although it definitely hadn’t been that long.

Ruby’s voice dulled to indecipherable background noise in her mind as she stared out in front of herself, eyes too stubborn or too lazy to move from watching how the specks that were people bustled around on the lower levels.

Then a hand flailed into her vision, _way_ too close to her face, and Weiss startled back.

“Hey!” came Ruby’s voice, and Weiss turned to look at her belatedly. She looked annoyed, but that too only reached Weiss’s consciousness as something sluggish and unimportant. “You listening?”

Weiss blinked at her slowly. God, she hated how much her brain was refusing to start and catch up right now. “What?”

Ruby doesn’t answer immediately, just stared at her for what could’ve been seconds or whole minutes, Weiss really couldn’t tell. Her annoyance seemed to melt away into something else, either curiosity or concern or maybe something else starting with a “c”?

Weiss wasn’t sure, but she was almost entirely distracted by the fact that Ruby’s eyelashes were _very_ pretty, and she has a truly unfair amount of them. If she didn’t know better, she would think that she used makeup. But she’d known Ruby long enough to know that _that_ wasn’t the case…

Her thought process that was kind of just drifting around her head aimlessly was interrupted again by a hand against her forehead, specifically _Ruby’s_ hand. It was only the backs of her fingers, pressing lightly into Weiss’s forehead, way more gently than what she was used to from Ruby in most scenarios.

Weiss shook her head and forced her eyes back into focus, and she was vaguely aware of Ruby pulling her hand back. “What the _hell_ are you doing?”

Ruby shrugged. “Just checking.”

“Checking _what_?” She rubbed absently at her forehead, because she weirdly felt like Ruby’s touch was lingering on her skin. Way after she shook off the feeling, she recognized the gesture as Ruby checking her for a fever, maybe? But why would she do that? “I’m fine,” Weiss added, just in case.

Ruby didn’t look convinced. “Are you, though?”

Weiss just made a confused noise at her. She hoped it would suffice.

It seemed to, because Ruby shrugged again and kept talking. “I don’t know, you’ve just been zoning out all day and I actually had to remind _you_ about the essay for Goodwitch. And when I asked for help with it you gave in, like, _way_ too easily, and you didn’t even sulk about it!”

Okay, that one was definitely true. So maybe Weiss has had less focus today than on most days and didn’t feel up to making a fuss about losing. So what?

“And you look terrible!” Ruby continued, and wow, _rude_ . Weiss wondered if her friend’s claim had any truth to it, though. She hasn’t looked in a mirror all day, didn’t really have the time. “I mean, not to be mean, but really! I didn’t think it was possible. You’re _you_!” 

Weiss wanted to tell her to get out of here with that simplification, but her sluggish mind didn’t seem to have any sharp comeback in stock and she didn’t feel up to all of Ruby’s teasing right now. 

Her mind was annoyingly fuzzy and the world around her felt like she was seeing and hearing it through frosted glass. When she opened her mouth to say what was definitely going to be a witty comeback, what came out instead was a yawn so big her jaw popped.

Ruby’s brow visibly furrowed at that. “How much did you sleep last night?”

What a dumb, irrelevant question. What was Ruby on about, anyway? But she didn’t feel up to arguing with her right now. She wondered why, but her mind came up blank, just like with everything else today. Annoying.

“I don’t know. Enough?”

“Weiss…” Ruby all but sighed, the exasperated kind, and okay, what was with _that_? Weiss felt like she was being pinned as the idiot here, which was just _completely_ unreasonable. Ruby was _clearly_ the idiot in this partnership.

She wasn’t. Not really. They were both idiots, while also they were very much not. Weiss wondered for a moment if that was why they worked so well together.

Ruby leaned in closer and searched for Weiss’s gaze, silver eyes flickering slightly from side to side until Weiss finally gave in and looked at her. Even with her red-tinged hair hiding half her face, she looked so sincere and _gentle_ , and it made Weiss sigh and give in way too easily.

Because Ruby had these unexpected little moments when her rough edges and everything that made her almost overwhelming to be around day and night seemed to soften out. When her warmth felt less like Weiss was going to burn up any second, and more like a mug of hot coffee when you’d been out in the cold all day but forgot your gloves at home.

And Weiss is utterly and regrettably _weak_ for Ruby letting herself go soft on her. And so she gave in.

“Okay… not much sleep,” she admitted, eyes flickering away before she forced them back to Ruby’s face. “But it’s fine!”

But by now Ruby knew how to see behind Weiss’s words and read behind her lines, in most cases anyway. She knew that Weiss always downplayed her own problems, because she was a big stubborn dumby, obsessed with thinking that she never needed any help.

Ruby was constantly swinging between finding it very worrying and just supremely _irritating,_ like some kind of very distressed pendulum. And so she arrived at a worrying, but fairly obvious interpretation. “Have you slept _at all?”_

Maybe it was because she was so tired and her thoughts were all fuzzy in her head. Maybe it was Ruby still being all soft and warm right in front of her. Maybe it was both, Weiss wasn’t sure. But once again, her stubborn resolve crumbled like it was never there in the first place. “...no.”

Ruby did not at all look pleased about that. “So you haven’t slept. At all. In over a day.”

Okay, screw this. Weiss looked away for real now because he couldn’t keep looking at Ruby anymore, not when even with her tone flat and clearly displeased she was looking at her like _that_. She hoped her deadpan tone was a herald of their usual teasing returning, because she knew how to handle that.

Worst case scenario she could just pretend to be offended and leave and then apologize over terrible cafeteria food. She knew how to handle the teasing and shoving and the bad jokes. Serious schoolwork and well-honed teamwork and interactions that somehow maybe border on flirting. She _knew_ all of that.

She didn’t know how to handle something like _this_.

In the end she just sighed, defeated, as if Ruby needed any more confirmation. “...Maybe.”

Weiss wasn’t sure if at this point she was expecting Ruby to call her an idiot and jump back into teasing her relentlessly. Or maybe she was just hoping that was what was going to happen so that she could finally return to her comfort zone of snark and stubbornness and never leave again.

As warm and delighted seeing Ruby go all soft on her made her feel, it also wasn’t something she could handle for long, or at _all_ really. She might handle it okay as long as she didn’t think about it, she wasn’t sure, because that blessed state of mind never tended to last her long.

But instead of going back to their usual dynamic and leaving Weiss to stew in her confused feelings in peace, Ruby sighed and for a moment she looked downright… worried? Weiss wasn’t sure, and the next moment that expression was gone, replaced by a look of fond exasperation that she was very familiar with, and so she decided that it must’ve just been her tired brain misinterpreting things.

“Alright. Okay,” Ruby started, talking but not _saying_ anything like she tended to when devising some over-the-top plan to sneak her dog into the dorms that would definitely get her caught by the RA’s. “You’re going to bed. Right now.”

First of all, _no_ , because Weiss was not a child anymore, and thus no one could tell her when her bedtime was. Okay, maybe Goodwitch could, but Goodwitch was kind of her own category in everything. 

Ruby, who was an absolute menace on her best days, was two whole years younger than Weiss. And she was technically a freshman, and so had no rights. Especially no right to order her to go to bed.

Second of all, why the hell did she sound so determined?

Weiss wanted to tell her all that, especially the first part, as in _screw you, Ruby Rose_ , but of course her brain and whatever part of it was supposed to handle her eloquence was not currently up to the job. “Ruby-”

“Nope! I don’t care, Weiss Cream, you gotta sleep.” She finally leaned back, which Weiss was grateful for, because she didn’t know how much longer she could’ve taken Ruby staring at her like that without straight up _melting_ probably. 

Ruby rocked back as she gathered momentum, and stood up annoyingly quickly when Weiss herself felt comparable to a sack of potatoes that somehow figured out how to grow legs. “Come on. Let’s get you back to your room.”

Weiss stared at the hand extended her way for a moment before she succumbed to her fate and let herself be pulled up.

She didn’t know what to do when Ruby was like this, and she _especially_ didn’t know now. She’d had Ruby go soft on her before, sure, but she’d never had her gently pushing and herding her around like this, the way Winter sometimes did and maybe something like the rare moments her mother did, too.

She’d always managed to brush Ruby off or get out of the situation before things could come to this, rushing back to the security she found in teasing or rolling her eyes or sulking in her dorm for a while. Not that her roommate was ever a big help in that regard. If Ruby was loud, her sister was unbearable.

But now she was in it and too tired to come up with anything and plan ten steps ahead, and so she had no choice but to go with it.

She swayed with vertigo once she was on her feet, the world before her eyes blinking out in blotches of colour and black. She vaguely felt Ruby’s arm around her back, her side pressed against hers, the only solid thing as the world came back into focus and the ringing in her ears subsided.

Ruby didn’t let go once they started moving, and Weiss didn’t have the energy to shove her off. If she’d been honest with herself, she’d say she didn’t _want_ to either.

She was barely paying attention to the walk back to her room, the pavement passing beneath her feet, the familiar faces they passed, and the corners they turned when Ruby pulled her this way or that. She was mostly just aware of Ruby’s movements, a rhythm that matched her own, and the warm presence still pressed against her side.

Her mind was a pleasantly sleepy fuzz despite it still being light out and it not even being dinner time yet, but she trusted Ruby not to lead her stray or let her run into any corners or any people.

The next thing Weiss knew, she was being guided down onto her bed on top of her comforter in her blessedly roommate-less dorm room. Gentle pushes and nudges laying her down, and Ruby’s arm was still around her like she was worried she was just going to fall over on her own. Honestly, she might.

The moment she can, Weiss curled up on her side, eyes shut. Because despite how she’d been holding up okay all day, now she felt positively exhausted all of the sudden. And being back in her own bed only seemed to make that even more obvious. Ruby was right for once, she _really_ should go to sleep early.

She felt comfortable and heavy, her mind pleasantly blank and slow and fuzzy with sleepiness. She just about heard Ruby still moving around her room, her footsteps light without any conscious thought. But Weiss was too comfortable to open her eyes again or move at all, or even to just make a single sound to thank her.

Doing anything at all right then felt like it’d take incredible effort to achieve, and Weiss was entirely content with not doing anything at all. Just hanging on the edge of falling asleep.

She was too out of it to even feel surprised when she felt a blanket settling over her, warm and smelling like sunshine because she’d had it draped over her desk chair by the window. She felt the bed dip as Ruby sat on it near her knees, arranging the blanket over her better.

Her friend folded back the edge of it over Weiss’s shoulder neatly, carefully, in a way Weiss couldn’t remember Winter ever doing, but how she thought her mother maybe used to, once upon a time. She followed the feeling of Ruby smoothing the blanket down over her one last time, a gentle pressure against her shoulder before it slipped away.

She expected Ruby to stand and leave now, her self-assigned job already more than done, but she didn’t feel any movement. Then-

“Would it really be so hard for you to stop worrying me for just, like, two days?” Ruby sighed, her voice gentle and fond and so quiet that Weiss’s fuzzy mind could barely make out the words. She was certain that were she actually asleep, this wouldn’t have woken her up at all. 

Weiss wondered absently if Ruby thought she was already asleep, too. “Because I do worry about you, y’know?” She heard the girl murmur, and vaguely felt a hand brush her bangs away from her face. “You wouldn’t believe me if you were awake, but I do.”

Oh.

But Weiss _did_ believe her, as scary as it was to admit sometimes. As much as she didn’t want to interpret the signs most days because she didn’t know what to do with them. But Ruby had said it, and Weiss believed her.

And her heart ached, because Ruby sounded so _sad_ and Weiss didn’t know _why_ , but she knew that she wanted to help and to fix it. But she couldn’t bring herself to move, to do anything at all. Her body and mind and everything was too heavy, too close to the edge of sleep. And so she did nothing.

“I wish you trusted me enough to ask for my help sometimes.”

Ruby lingered for another moment after that, and Weiss found herself trying to commit her words into memory. Then the mattress shifted and leveled out again, Ruby’s weight gone from it.

“Night,” she said, from further away now, her voice still quiet enough to let Weiss sleep over it, but sounding maybe a little bit more fond than sad this time. And then Weiss heard the door open and close as quietly as it could, just barely over the sleepiness filing her head.


	2. Lacking Something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little rest has been had, but maybe that wasn’t the real solution to the problem that Weiss still wouldn’t admit she had

Weiss woke a few hours later, from a blessedly dreamless sleep. She wasn’t sure what time it was and she didn’t really  _ care _ either, but it was already dark out and she could hear crickets through the open window. 

Glancing across the room, she could see the sprawling lump with matching golden hair that marked the presence of her roommate. Snores like a chainsaw filled the room, and Weiss was honestly shocked that they hadn’t woken her up long before this. She must’ve  _ really _ been needing some sleep.

She wished she could’ve slept through the whole night like this and made up for some of the sleep she was so sorely missing. But sadly Ruby’s worry, bless her, had not accounted for practical things such as the fact that going to sleep in one’s day clothes, shoes and jacket included, and without dinner wasn’t the best recipe for restful sleep in the long run.

Of course, Weiss wasn’t angry at Ruby for that. She really did appreciate all she’d done today, but she was regrettably awake now, and she would really prefer not to be. Especially not crumpled in her day clothes and with her stomach growling for attention.

She must’ve slept through their group’s regular dinner meet-up. She wondered if Ruby had told the other to let her sleep instead of coming to look for her, and something warmed in her at the thought.

Still lying in her bed, she was already gathering the energy to actually get up. Because she couldn’t go back to sleep like this. Frankly, she was amazed she’d fallen asleep at all, no matter how tired she might have been. 

Before she even realized what she was doing, Weiss had a plan in mind.

First, she needed something to eat, because if she didn’t then this time it was going to be his stomach keeping her up all night. Second, she needed to get some proper pajamas on, not just what she’d been wearing all day. 

Third… Well third she’d crawl back into bed and hope for the best.

The reason she had been so tired in the first place, and still was honestly, came back to her slowly now that she had enough rest to even think about that.

Working on projects and papers until the wee hours of the morning until Yang, coming back from a party, finally bullied her into actually resting. The anxious tossing and turning that followed, never finding a comfortable position for long enough. Then the nightmares brought on by stress and anxiety and who knew what else that seemed to start up the moment she closed her eyes and scared her back awake.

It had made for an altogether terrible night.

Eventually she ended up so frustrated that she decided to simply forgo sleeping altogether, and just read until morning came. At the time it had seemed like the logical solution. By the tame the sun did rise and Yang’s snoring stopped, she was too exhausted to regret her decision.

Weiss really,  _ really _ didn’t want a repeat of that, but here she was anyway. Planning a little detour before inevitably diving back into the same hell again.

Because what could she even hope for at this point? 

Her nights had been getting steadily worse for a while now. She wished she could do something about it, but she had nothing. So all she could do was resign herself to yet another night of barely any sleep, and then face the rest of campus no doubt looking and feeling terrible in the morning.

It wasn’t really something to look forward to.

_ I wish you trusted me enough to ask for my help sometimes. _

Ruby’s words echoed around in her head and no. No,  _ no _ , shut  _ up _ . She couldn’t go to Ruby with this, she’d never live it down! Ruby would never leave her alone about it, surely, let alone anyone else who found out that the great Weiss Schnee was having trouble sleeping and had to call on an eight year old for help.

Not to mention, it wasn’t like Ruby could just magically make her fall asleep and have sweet dreams until morning broke. Ruby’s words had really stuck with her apparently. They made her chest feel all warm and tight and weird, and she’d have to examine them in the morning, hoping she’d still remember them by then. But this… This was not something Ruby could fix. It just  _ wasn’t _ .

_ Except _ , she realized, very very frustrated,  _ None of that is actually true. _

Because she remembered Ruby’s gentleness and worry from the day. How hard she tried to take care of Weiss, her complete lack of teasing as she tucked her in. She never once implied that this was a bother to her at all, or that she thought less of Weiss because of it, or that this was anything but natural and  _ given _ .

She  _ knew _ that Ruby could be caring if she wanted to be. Weiss had seen how she immediately dropped any and all teasing and joking around if someone was hurt or in need of help, because despite everything, that was where her priorities seemed to lie.

Messing around on the quad with Yang, Jaune and Nora, and without Blake, Pyrrha, or Ren to rein any of them in was a mistake. Those four were known to get a little over-enthused if left to their own devices, and this had been no exception.

They had been playing some game with a frisbee that Nora had made up which was never a good sign. Jaune had tried to explain the rules to her, but she’d ignored him and gone back to her book, only glancing up at them from the branch she was perched on to glare at them occasionally.

One glance, a frisbee to the face, and Weiss had sadly been on the receiving end of a stray hit that Yang  _ swore _ had been meant for Nora.

Weiss had toppled back out of the tree and crumpled to the ground, winded. The hit had been completely unexpected and stronger than Yang’s previous ones, careful enough not to hurt before that.

She had been fine, she just needed to catch her breath, but Ruby… she didn’t  _ know _ that. She had ignored Nora’s calls to follow the rules, to stay put and continue the game, and opted instead for sprinting over and landing hard on her knees next to Weiss. 

Frantically tugging her up to sit properly, she’d kept her touches fleeting like she’d been scared of hurting her worse. She had apologised and asked if Weiss was okay, over and over, multiple times until Weiss couldn’t help but laugh. 

It had been the first time she’d seen Ruby look at her like that. All soft and warm and like she  _ cared _ .

Logically, she knew that Ruby would never tease her for something like this, but she still wasn’t used to it. She didn’t know how to handle it. And so every time, Weiss assumed again and again, that there wouldn’t be another instance. 

There wouldn’t be another moment of Ruby dropping everything just to make sure that Weiss is okay, and so she never expected it when it inevitably happened again. She thought,  _ hoped _ , that maybe she could ask for Ruby’s help tonight.

Because damn it, she knew, as irritating as it was to admit, that she felt safer around Ruby. She felt strangely calm around her, not all the time but more often than if she were on her own. Even if Ruby wasn’t doing anything special or particularly interesting, just rambling on about whatever or trying to drive Weiss up the wall or just studying with her shoulder pressed up against hers.

She knew that she’d slept well every time she’d slept near Ruby so far, during accidental and planned sleepovers both, because the closeness and contact comforted her. And having Ruby close, when she was the person Weiss was having nightmares about-

-Ruby getting lost, or hurt, or  _ dying _ -

-Then maybe proximity could help with said nightmares, too. At the very least, when she woke up choking on tears and gasping for breath, she could look down and see her there, asleep and comfortable and perfectly  _ safe _ .

But dammit, she  _ hated _ admitting that she needed help. Hated asking for it even more, but that was a different problem.

Sadly, she was also no use to the world when she was barely on her feet from sleep deprivation, and she couldn’t keep hindering her own education due to her own stubbornness. So she pushed herself out of bed, finally.

Weiss very deliberately put off admitting that she did, in fact, need help by instead dealing with the first two items on her to-do list: Food and pajamas.

She changed first, wanting to feel comfortable in her own skin already, and she decidedly hated the feeling of having slept in her clothes. It wasn’t like she would be running into anyone this late anyway, and even if she did, they’d probably seen worse than a sleepy Weiss wandering the halls in mismatched pajamas.

It helped that she was too tired to really care if anyone saw her like this. Embarrassment could come later, when her mind was firing on more than one cylinder.

Next she wandered down to the kitchen on the next floor down. She flicked on the lights, they burned her eyes, and she hoped to any gods that there would be food to scrounge from the cabinets. Hopefully something more than a stray box of macaroni and cheese left there by another student.

Because she definitely did not have the energy required for making any sort of actual meal without accidentally burning down the building. Not even a sandwich. Or cereal.

Bless whoever left a bunch of bananas in the back of the fridge. Sorry whoever these belonged to, she was claiming them in the name of hunger and the Schnee family.

Weiss sat on the rickety table, because there wasn’t anyone around to stare daggers at her until she got off and sat on a chair like a respectable person. She very pointedly decided  _ not _ to think about anything related to today, or Ruby, or the shameful fact that she did in fact have problems she needed help with.

But it was really hard not to think of something when you were actively trying not to.

She ended up trying to methodically recite poems to herself in her head as she ate another banana, and gave up trying to remember the line she kept getting stuck on when she was left with nothing but two banana peels in her hand.

Weiss frowned, pretending she was just frustrated at failing the memory exercise, and threw them out.


	3. Lacking Someone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As reluctant as Weiss was to take it, a solution has been reached. A new day was dawning.

Weiss didn’t turn on any more lights on her way back to her room, even if the darkness after the kitchen lights turned off felt unpleasantly deep for a while. She knew her way around well enough anyway.

She only went back to her own room to fetch the blanket Ruby had draped over her hours earlier. Partly because she might actually need it, and partly to bring it to Ruby as an offering for the night.

Ruby was a total blanket hoarder who somehow slept under three blankets even when the hall’s air conditioning broke, and she seemed indifferent to the fact that she would thus wake up gross and sweaty every morning. She said that the heavier the blankets on top of her got, the more comfortable she felt.

Weiss thought she should just get a single heavy blanket then, but that was just her opinion.

The door to Ruby’s dorm room swung open more quietly than she would’ve expected, and Weiss couldn’t help but roll her eyes upon finding it unlocked. Hadn’t she ever heard of security? That dolt was just asking to get attacked, it seemed Weiss’s nightmares weren’t entirely unfounded.

A string of still twinkling fairy lights glowed faintly above Ruby’s bed, paired with what looked like a million glow-in-the-dark star stickers over her roommate’s bed. A halo of curling orange hair was all Weiss could see from the other girl in the dim light, but the steady rise and fall of the covers showed that she was definitely asleep. 

Ruby herself had strung up a makeshift canopy over her own bed. When Weiss had asked about it, she’d just grinned and said it made her feel like she was a character from a fairy tale. Weiss tiptoed through the mess on Ruby’s side of the room, stepping over stray books and clothes, and already regretting her decision to come here in the first place.

Ruby seemed to wake only to Weiss sitting down on the side of her bed. Her huge silvery eyes blinked open to stare up at her, a dark silhouette with just enough detail for her to recognise.

“Hey,” Weiss said, voice a whisper, not daring to speak any louder for fear of waking up Ruby’s roommate. She thanked every god who might be listening that even _if_ Penny woke up, she was not the type to take pictures to use for potential blackmail.

Ruby shifted slightly under her horrible pile of blankets and pillows so she could look up at her more comfortably. “Hey. You okay?”

Weiss tried really hard not to show how touched she was by that question being immediate. The darkness helped. “Yeah,” she said, because Ruby didn’t need to know the rest. “Can I stay here?”

“Of course.” Ruby didn’t even miss a beat, like there was never a chance she’d answer any differently. She scooted back to the wall to make room for Weiss pulling the edge of her blankets with her so that they wouldn’t get in the way.

The bed was barely big enough for one person, let alone two. Ruby seemed too sleepy to notice the problem that Weiss should have seen a mile away.

Weiss ended up keeping her blanket to herself. She laid down on her side with only minimal issues arising from trying to fit the both of them onto one bed. Ruby actually lifted her blankets up and settled them over Weiss as well, effectively cocooning them both in place.

When she finally settled into place, facing Ruby, she found Ruby’s eyes already staring at her intently through the dark. They were reflecting the moonlight from the window and were looking worryingly alert for someone who had been fast asleep just a few minutes ago.

“You’re sure you’re okay though?” Ruby whispered finally after a few moments of silence. Weiss couldn’t see her well enough in the dark, but she thought she was wearing that soft worried expression again. The one that did things to Weiss’s heart and made her want to both run away and stay forever. “You were practically sleepwalking just a few hours ago, and now you’re up again.”

Weiss couldn’t hold her gaze for long, even in the dark like that, before she had to look away and find something else to stare at. Maybe it was because she was tired, but with Ruby here, with everything she’d done for her today and with how she was looking at her…

… It made it feel a lot less tempting to retreat back into her shell. Into her safe little zone of snark, and smooth lines, and well-aimed words, and just remain stubbornly _alone_. It had stopped feeling like it was her only option, anyway.

“I… I’ve been sleeping terribly. Like…” She breathed, screwing her eyes shut so that she didn’t have to look anywhere. She didn’t _want_ to talk about this, everything with her was screaming against it, but she couldn’t stop now.

Couldn’t stop herself now.

She felt vulnerable, and she _hated_ it. But somehow despite that, she also felt safe. She didn’t want to think about why, either. She’d rather keep talking than think about that. “I can hardly fall asleep because I’m restless, and when I do sleep, it’s just… nightmares. So many _nightmares_ , all the time, so at the end of the day I figured I was better off just… not sleeping at all.”

She trusted Ruby, she really did, but out of some habit and fear she still braced herself for something that would be enough to shatter her in that moment.

That something, of course, never came.

“Hey, I get it,” Ruby said, quiet and slow and sounding the same kind of sad that she had when she’d talked to Weiss when she’d thought she was asleep and said she wished Weiss trusted her.

She reached out to adjust the blanket over Weiss’s shoulder like she wasn’t even thinking about it, a silent spark of affection trying to find a way to express itself. “I’ve been sleeping badly, too.”

_Oh._

Weiss’s heart twisted painfully in her chest when she finally connected that sentence with just how alert Ruby had looked the moment Weiss had sat down on her bed.

Then very, very quietly Ruby spoke again. Just over a breath, quiet enough that if Weiss wanted to, she could pretend she hadn’t heard any of it, because it wasn’t like she could see Ruby’s lips move in the darkness. It was an easy way out, should she need to take it.

“It helps when you’re here.”

But Weiss heard it, and not for a moment did she want to pretend that she didn’t. She smiled, small and soft and maybe a bit fragile, because she was feeling fragile herself right then. It was the relief that this didn’t only comfort her, that she wasn’t alone, that she wasn’t just being ridiculous.

And it was also knowing that she had a way to help Ruby, too. A way that they could help _each other_ , even if the fact that Ruby would need this help in the first place hurt to think about.

She didn’t want to think about Ruby waking like she’d been waking night after night for days now, out of breath and her heart hammering in her chest, trying to fight the urge to cry, and sometimes failing. But if that did happen, if Weiss couldn’t stop it from happening, at least tonight she could be around to help her deal with it.

“It helps me, too.”

They talked for some time after that, voices kept quiet, about random little things that had happened in the past few days. Nothing too significant or heavy, nothing worrying, nothing about the future neither of them wanted to think about for now. Probably nothing to remember by next morning either. It was comfortable.

They both grew more and more tired by the minute, voices slurred sometimes, blinks got longer. At some point Ruby took Weiss’s hand, and Weiss didn’t even stop to react to it, because this small form of affection, a simple point of contact felt so much like it belonged in that moment. 

Soon enough Ruby’s other hand was out from under her horrible blanket pile too, as she pulled Weiss’s hand closer to herself and examined her painted nails in the dark. They were barely chipped yet, only two days old, and so she eventually settled for thumbing over them as the two of them continued to talk, delighting in the smooth texture, and Weiss let her.

And then Weiss yawned so wide her jaw popped, and she pulled her other hand up to cover her face as he did. When she looked at Ruby again she found her looking at her all fond and soft and open, and it made Weiss wonder if Ruby felt as safe here as she did. 

She imagined that maybe Ruby had worn this same look, a look that she couldn’t really describe, because loving sounds too big a word for her to dare use, when she’d tucked her into bed earlier that night. 

It was a look Weiss found she cherished greatly and tucked away into some safe, warm corner of her mind to think about on worse days, and she thought that maybe it made her feel loved, but she was too scared to actually name it as that.

“Sleep,” Ruby said, still watching her like that. Her voice was gentle and her thumb was rubbing back and forth against the back of Weiss’s hand.

Weiss squinted at her, because her immediate reaction, even half asleep, was that she didn’t like it when Ruby was right. 

“As long as you don’t kick me out of bed in the middle of the night.”

Ruby laughed, just quiet huffs of breath against the quiet, but somehow none different from her much louder ones from during the day. Her thumb was still moving against Weiss’s hand. “I won’t, I promise.”

“Okay.” Weiss nodded against her pillow. Thank goodness Ruby had a veritable nest of the things, how would they have made this work otherwise? 

She realised too late that she probably should’ve made her swear on that. Better safe than sorry, one could never be too careful.

Well, here’s to hoping she wouldn’t find herself waking on the floor at three in the morning.

So she made herself comfortable, settling in to sleep. She pulled Ruby’s hand she was still holding closer to herself and Ruby didn't protest, until the backs of Ruby’s fingers rested against Weiss’s collarbone. 

She didn’t know why she found that so comforting, the added point of contact and the closeness, but she really did. She hoped that it would help her sleep through the night, this time.

She curled up a little more, arranging her legs better. Ruby just moved to accommodate her, until the two of them fit together better.

“Goodnight,” Weiss said, barely audible, finally giving in to her exhaustion again. She closed her eyes.

“Goodnight,” Ruby repeated back, and she squeezed Weiss’s hand once. Even if she couldn’t see it, wouldn’t be able to even with her eyes open thanks to the darkness, Weiss could still hear the smile in his voice. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

The next morning Weiss woke to early sunlight, with Ruby’s fingers clutching at the front of her shirt and her body curled close to hers. As her eyes swept the mess of blankets on the bed and Ruby’s ridiculous bedhead, through her comfortable, sleepy haze she realised that, for the first time in a while, she’d slept through the night without a single nightmare.

She had no idea what time it was, but she figured, way too comfortable for her conscience to be working yet, that if she needed to do something, it could freaking wait for once. 

So for now she closed her eyes again, bumped her head gently against Ruby’s, and went back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's that for that! More in this AU will be coming as soon as I have time to write more. If there's anything in particular ya'll want to see, just shoot me a comment down there, and I can try to write something for it. Or just shoot me a comment down there about whatever, I love reading them. Thanks for reading!


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